[MUSIC] The first moment that I realized that I wanted to be an astronaut, was the day where I, as a young boy along with millions and millions of people around the globe watch those first footsteps on the Moon. >> One giant leap for mankind. >> I realized that humanity had just become a different species. We were no longer a species confined to our planet. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a part of that exploration. I wanted to be part of that group of people that stepped off the planet. And was able to look back upon ourselves. [MUSIC] >> As a child, I assumed that I would go into space. We were trying to get to the moon, the whole Apollo program, and it seemed like we had this momentum moving forward. And I assumed I would be a part of it. >> When you watch a space shuttle launch on TV it looks like you see all this white smoke and eventually this space shuttle just slowly, gradually rises out of the smoke and heads up, but what is it felt like we were on the end of a slingshot. [SOUND] And when those solid rocket boosters fire, you realize you are going somewhere. [SOUND] That somebody that just let go of that slingshot and off you go. [SOUND] That was a really amazing experience. [MUSIC] And that first day, my first day in space, the most spectacular moment was when you look at the window for the first time. [MUSIC] When you are able to unstrap out of your seat, your tasks are over, and you get to really take a look at our planet, it is absolutely just breathtaking to see that. [MUSIC] >> It is just an incredible view. I look down at this planet, at our Earth. And you see this thin, shimmering layer of blue light that's our atmosphere that sustains us. It almost seems like it iridescence from within. [MUSIC] >> What's really amazing and beautiful is watching this line slowly pass across the Earth blow us. Something that you can't see from the Earth. [MUSIC] And watching all the evidence of human activity all of a sudden come alive as we pass into the dark side of the orbit. We flew so close to dancing curtain and Auroras that we felt like we could reach out and touch them. [MUSIC] There's so many just absolutely breathtaking things. [MUSIC] If we can do this, if nations can join together and do this amazing thing in space, imagine what we can do to overcome the challenges facing our planet. But the other side of that is we have this incredibly beautiful, peaceful, fragile planet from space. But you can't help but think about the unfortunate realities of life on our planet for a significant portion of those inhabitants. [MUSIC] >> The real issue is how do we operate here on this planet. [MUSIC] There's a story that comes from India that says that once upon a time humans had the God hit in themselves. But we behaved so badly that the God's decided to take it away from us, and so they were trying to figure out where to hide it so that human's wouldn't find it. One said, let's put it at the bottom of the ocean, they'll never find it there, and everybody said, no one day, humans will get to the bottom of the ocean and they'll find it there. And now they said let's put it in the skies, in the heaven. They said no humans will fly that far one day and they'll find them. [MUSIC] And Obama said, I know where they're hiding, let's put it inside of humans themselves, because they'll never think to look for it there. [MUSIC] We have to look inside of ourself to figure this out. [MUSIC] >> So we look at those first images that came back from space. It's important for us to understand that those are as out of date now as my high school yearbook picture is. You look at the summer arctic there's 40% less ice on it. We look at those vast oceans and they are 30% more acid than they were 40 years ago. It's hard for us to take in both the kind of beauty and majesty and to understand the vulnerability and the fragility of those systems. [MUSIC] Clearly, the basic, most fundamental, physical problem that we face is this exploding fountain of carbon into the atmosphere warming the planet. [MUSIC] And that comes from the fact that fossil fuel radically transformed our set of possibilities, beginning 300 years ago. [MUSIC] >> We are at the point where we know that humans have impacted the planet. That was something that we didn't think about, 200, 300 years ago. We weren't having that kind of impact. We know we can affect the world. [MUSIC] [SOUND] >> The sense of separation, that all of us usually feel. The feeling that there's a me inside here somewhere, maybe behind the eyes, inside the ears, looking out at you, or an objective external world. This sense of separation is not real, it's a delusion. Or in more contemporary terms, it's a psychological and social construct. [MUSIC] >> We can be very savage as human being. And this, of course, has to do with the fact that we have to survive as a human species, and sometimes the ego has a role in this human existence. That's how we survive it, and also our ancestors, our parents tried to that we have to be little bit selfish in order to survive. And that is the part of the old consciousness. [MUSIC] >> The whole drive of western society with commodification and consumerism is buy this, get this, own this, and that sense of lack, that sense that you have that something is missing will disappear. [MUSIC] And of course, we know from our own experience, it don't work like that. There will always be something incomplete and it's bottomless. Once you engage in that project, it's like your digging in one hole and tossing the dirt in another. And you'll be doing that forever. [MUSIC] >> So what's the solution to this? Is it returning to nature? [MUSIC] Well, we can't return to nature because if we really understand it, we've never left it. [MUSIC] We don't need to return to nature, but we do need to realize the sense in which we are embedded in nature. [MUSIC] >> Central to that is that the Earth is seen as a living system. A living being where everything we are and can ever be is dependent upon this great verdant, fertile, sensitive, intricately interwoven web of life. [MUSIC] >> In terms of looking at a truth like interdependence, how interrelated everybody's life is. We often just ignore that fact, because it's so mind boggling to think about just setting foot in one city on this planet. If one stepped onto subway platform to even think about, there's 500 other feeling, thinking, eating, loving, human beings here. We feel like we can't handle that. That level of awareness. [MUSIC] >> This question of identity is central to how we feel about ourselves and how we treat each other, and how we treat the environment. Who we think we are in the scheme of things really influences that. [MUSIC] >> Really, the place that we need to return to, in order to recognize home, is our own bodies, our own sensation. Our own direct experience with sound, and movement, and feeling, sense, and motion, and pain, and joy, and the complicated things that we're not able to give words to. We don't have the capacity to feel our connection to the Earth, to feel our connection to others, the people that seem different, and foreign, and strange from us. [MUSIC] We're of this Earth, we're not on the Earth. We're of the Earth. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> We have a lot of solutions that are already present across the planet. But I think at the heart of this is a deepening sense of awe and wonder at the beauty and astounding, infinitely astounding complexity in which we live. [MUSIC] What is required is the intrinsic value of nature is known to all of us. From a child to an adult, through the window of wonder. That's what we need more than anything. [MUSIC] >> I think that that state of awe is highly instructive. And it remains unexamined for us in modern culture because we dismiss it as a childlike response to the world. It's not, it's the doorway to a kind of peace and an opening through which I hope an undreamed of politics, an undreamed of level of cooperation, an undreamed of level of reconciliation, is possible. [MUSIC] >> What instantly touches the heart mind. And it's sudden and you can count on it. It's like the kiss of the universe. And that's to glimpse its beauty. [MUSIC] Doesn't take long. It doesn't take an argument. [MUSIC] You're just stripped of all your explanations and all your notions of who and what you want to be as achieving individual and then you're just, yeah. [MUSIC] And you're struck with such a gladness of that beauty and the originality of him. [MUSIC] And you don't have time to think about. How is it going to turn out? All you know is you'll serve it to the last breath. [MUSIC]
